Alexandra knew that she was definitely going to regret ever agreeing to this.

She gazed distantly out the window as the wind brought droplets of rain toward their car, hitting its side mercilessly like hailstones. Her mind wandered back to just a couple of days before; in contrast to the current gloomy weather, Friday morning was nothing but perfection. The holiday was coming to an end in a mere three days and she would finally be reuniting with her friends again. She didn't travel abroad like her friends did, however, but she was eager to listen to the stories they brought from lands she doubted she would ever visit in the near future.

Her peaceful moment of bliss, however, was quickly interrupted by none other than her mother, who came rushing into her room that morning with a smile that she hadn't seen in years.

"Good news, sweetie!" her mother Vivienne exclaimed with excitement when she opened the door and peeked around the corner. She came in to the sight of her daughter lounging quietly on a light grey bean-bag with a laptop on her lap. Alexa immediately lowered the monitor because she knew how much her mother hated to see her eyes fixed on the brightened screen whenever the latter spoke, but she didn't seem to mind that at all this time.

Instead, she disappeared momentarily before returning with a maroon suitcase dragged behind her. Alexa had to double-check the date and time in her laptop to make sure she wasn't dreaming.

"Mom," she began hesitantly. "It's three days before school starts. Why did you bring my suitcase here just now?"

"That's because we're not going travelling," she said with a wink. "You will still have to pack, though. Just bring the necessities and we'll see what else we can fit in, otherwise the rest will have to go in the boxes, I suppose."

Alexa frowned. "Why? What are we doing and where the hell will we be going?"

Her mother clapped her hands together. "Why, we're moving, of course! And we're going to the beautiful, quiet, countryside town of Silvercrest!" Her smile turned to a grin as she began dancing a little, which only made her daughter be even more embarrassed to have a mother like her. "Yay!"

Alexa's eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped open, disbelieving what her ears just picked up. She even considered pinching or slapping herself to make sure that she wasn't dreaming. Or rather, having a nightmare, and the worst one yet—worse than even the one she had about a zombie apocalypse that left her with a fever the rest of the day.

Moving? She thought hysterically to herself. Silvercrest? Why?

As if reading her thoughts, her mother continued, "I know I should've told you this earlier, but my boss recently stationed me in Silvercrest Hospital because the facility was having a lack of staff to deal with the sudden increase in patients coming in, but it seems that they have been coming in showing rather strange symptoms, and a handful of them have been treated for months but showing little improvement. I'll need to get to the bottom of this, but I doubt that this will be done in a short period of time. Months, even. I don't dare to leave you here for days while I'm in another town, so why don't we just move for the time being? At least until this whole issue is done, then we can discuss what we'll do in the future."

She was about to say something in defense when her mother immediately added, "It'll be a great—I promise! A change in scenery, and a change in the environment… After all that's been happening recently, I think it's time for us to—you know—get a fresh start, rewinding back to zero and work our way up from there. What do you think?"

She wanted to refuse. To say no because she didn't like the idea of moving, particularly the idea of moving out of her comfort zone—not that this place gave her any comfort anymore, not with recent events. There were too many bad memories here, but there were some good ones, too. She wasn't willing to drop everything and leave it all behind, yet. And besides, what harm could another two years in high school here do to her?

But, seeing the smile on her mother's face that she had missed and hadn't seen in such a long time, she couldn't find the courage to say no. Her mother's curiosity was something that she inherited herself, and that was what got her to many unfortunate incidents that contributed in making those pleasant as well as many of the terrible memories. Her mother claimed a while ago that she was no different than her daughter during her own teenage years, always wandering around and trying to find her calling in the world.

She eventually found it, though. Her passion to help the unfortunate led her to medical school, but their less fortunate family background prevented her from furthering her studies to obtain a proper degree in a specific medical field. She resorted to working as a nurse, but strived to become the best in the league. She had what Alexa used to call as 'miracle hands'— there was never a single patient that she was assigned to before that didn't recover from whatever illness or injury they had, as long as there was a method of curing them.

Her mother's curiosity did lead her to many interesting situations involving the patients she handled, and she would tell many of those stories to her daughter ever since she was nothing more than a struggling and perhaps even dimming light of hope—nothing more than an unpaid intern at the local clinic. They replaced the bedtime stories that other kids would hear before they went to bed, and Alexa didn't mind. It kept that way until she was too old to be told a story before going to bed, but she would listen in during dinnertime after her mother came home from work, still in her uniform and yet to take a shower. She was only too eager to share her stories to the only person she had left.

But now, her curiosity led her elsewhere, and whereas Alexa would usually be the supportive daughter she was to every career venture her mother took, she considered on backing out this time. Silvercrest was no ordinary countryside town; it was literally located in the middle of nowhere, as if it was purposefully excluded from the rest of the world. Many maps lacked the location of this town, in fact, and she wasn't surprised why. Nothing good ever came out of that town; rumor had it that something supernatural lurked around the town, and there were more than enough reports of unsolved murders and unexplained mysterious happenings to steer even its own residents away from the town.

And yet, it still existed to this day. Not only was it dangerously close to the town she grew up in, but now, she actually had to move and live there. And as much as Alexa's own curiosity led her to wonder what was really happening in that town, she didn't even know if she would like the truth of what lurked beneath Silvercrest, much less actually move there herself and possibly experience those happenings firsthand.

Nevertheless, she couldn't let her mother down. Not when it gave the latter an opportunity to shine and show the world her 'miracle hands,' and perhaps make a better living for the two of them.

So she accepted without complaint. And here she was now, sitting in the passenger's seat of the lonely car with her head on her hand propped against the door, waiting for something else to appear in her line of vision other than rows and rows of evergreen trees. She wondered how far into the forest the town really was—the rice fields that bordered the town she grew up in disappeared a long time ago—but was thankful that a few people at least had the decency to build an asphalt road leading through the lush forest and towards the town.

It had been three hours since they left their old house and headed for the road. Her Spotify playlist that she filled with about twenty loud rock songs her mother would no doubt disapprove was in the middle of its second loop, but despite the screaming in her ears, her eyes were beginning to droop and her head had collided with the glass window more than several times. Even browsing through Tumblr or Pinterest didn't keep her from slowly giving into boredom either. There were almost no games in her phone to keep her occupied, leading her to ponder upon why little children, including her younger cousins, could get themselves so wrapped around tiny screens on mobile devices.

The twenty-first century, she thought, was truly an amazing age.

Another two hours further into the ride and finally something other than trees, light poles or other lone cars that was heading towards the opposite direction they were appeared in view. At first she thought it was some advertisement on a billboard, but as they approached it, she could clearly read the black stylized letters painted onto the wooden board:

Welcome to Silvercrest! It read. We hope you enjoy your stay!

Below the letters was a silhouette painting of a howling wolf at the top of a hill, with a night sky backdrop glittered with tiny dots as stars. It would've been beautiful, if the weather hadn't been as cruel as it was leading to the wearing of the wooden planks and the paint that had begun to fade away around the edges of the sign.

She heard her mom sigh in relief beside her. When she looked over to her side, her mother's posture finally relaxed as her shoulders drooped beside her. The skin over her knuckles was no longer taut and she wasn't clutching onto the steering wheel as though their lives had depended on it. Her work stress had clearly worn her out, and despite all the attempts made to make her body as filled as it used to be, her mother's body still looked like the grim reaper's in Alexa's eyes.

Fifteen minutes further and buildings finally began to materialize into view. It looked as if the town had been held at least five years back from current civilization outside of the town; the buildings were mostly two to three stories tall, at maximum five, and many of them still had a weathered red-brick exterior with pastel trims and accents. There was a fair number of stores and shops and little stands that indicated that the town's economy was still faring quite decently, but the significant number of people in their middle ages and above, more than where she used to live, indicated that they might be facing the problem of an ageing population as well, alongside other issues.

Regardless, Alexa was all to relieved to see actual life before her eyes after seeing such a lack of it for the past five hours or so, even despite the obvious somber expressions on their faces. She wasn't surprised, though; the town's reputation clearly preceded itself, even to its own citizens. She could only come up with few reasons why people would rather remain here instead of moving someplace elsewhere.

There weren't any proper road signs throughout the town, it seemed, that they had to ask several locals just to find the more residential part of town. Unfortunately, it wasn't too far from the industrial area, too, as indicated by the thicker-than-normal sheet of fog. Strange, since there seemed to be no factories nearby or anywhere around the quaint little mountainside town at all. Then again, it was the cheaper residential area that was uncomfortably close to the edges of the forest that bordered the town, which was what her mother could afford with their current financial situation.

Alexa didn't mind, though. As long as she still got to go to school and perhaps continue life as she normally would've back in her hometown, and as long as her mother remained happy living here, she wouldn't mind at all.

Their house was just one in an entire cluster that spanned over three blocks, all of them with near-identical, semi-detached, two-story houses. The exterior of theirs was painted with a warm coffee color, had dark-brown tiles for the roof and the stereotypical white picket fences that encircled the lot and separated them from their neighbors, if the other half of the building was even occupied at all. From the outside, the house looked surprisingly brand new with the exception of the front yard, which looked negated with its knee-high, untamed wild grass that Alexa made sure she was going to mow herself, should they brought their lawnmower with them as well.

Vivienne killed the engine and unlocked the doors, and, together with her daughter, spend the next hour simply unloading their belongings from the back of their car, along with the first truck that arrived shortly after they did. Alexa wasn't used to doing this much labor work—two days ago, she thought she would be doing nothing but finish the last of her holiday homework and maybe catch up with Attack on Titan for once, the only anime she ever saw and liked.

Beggars can't be choosers, she reminded herself instead, wiping the sweat from her brow and the sides of her face as she brought the last cardboard box inside and used the box cutter to slice the tape open. By then the first stars of the night had begun to twinkle against the darkened skies, but half of their belongings were already inside and simply needed rearranging, while waiting for the second-half that would be arriving the day after.

Vivienne paid the men who helped them move in for their work and waited until their truck disappeared from view before she closed the front door and locked it for the night before moving to help Alexa unpack the last of their stuff. They had oatmeal for dinner, and as soon as Alexa finished hers, she immediately excused herself from the island counter that now served as their dining table and headed for her new bedroom. Although she was somewhat excited to be rearranging her stuff and redecorating her room, all the energy was drained from her after helping out with the move, and all she wanted to do was to be drowned in the peaceful bliss that was sleep.

But when she did get to her room, she found herself unable to sleep, and instead spent at least half an hour staring at the dark grey ceiling above her—almost the exact same shade as the ceiling of her old bedroom back in her hometown.

Then her phone buzzed. She blinked, and without looking, reached over to her bedside table and clicked on a random button. The screen lit up as soon as she brought it to her face. She squinted and felt the knot in her heart tighten a little when she read the new notification that popped up.

It was a text from her boyfriend—her ex-boyfriend.

She didn't bother reading it. She knew it would contain the exact same words, if not similar or rearranged to make sentences that still contained the same meaning. She unlocked her phone, went to her message bar and deleted it.

Then she went to her contacts and deleted his number, too.

A fresh start, she reminded herself as she closed her eyes, sighing as she set the phone back down on the table. She took a few deep breaths and fell into a dreamless sleep.